Collective development of Water Principles

We would like to develop a set of Water Principles that help explain how we restore the water cycle to help with the ecosystem, hydrating the earth, restoring the rains, lessening floods, slowing climate change, and providing enough water to the people. And we would like to do this in a way that involves hydrologists, climatologists, water experts, permaculturists who work with water etc so we get collective agreement on the set of principles.

The Natural Steps of Sustainability ( thenaturalstep.org) is one model we can seek to emulate. It was begun by Karl Henrick Robert in 1989, and had over a hundred scientists iterating and revising the principles until they got to this set of principles:

“In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing…

1… concentrations of substances from the earth’s crust (such as fossil CO2, heavy metals and minerals)

2… concentrations of substances produced by society (such as antibiotics and endocrine disruptors)

3… degradation by physical means (such as deforestation and draining of groundwater tables).

4. And in that society there are no structural obstacles to people’s health, influence, competence, impartiality and meaning.”

Natural Step also had the laws of how the earth system behaved

“All the matter that will ever exist on earth is here now (1st LCoM).

.Disorder increases in all closed systems and the Earth is a closed system with respect to matter (2nd LCoM). However, it is an open system with respect to energy since it receives energy from the sun.

.Sunlight, or energy radiation, (LoTD) is responsible for almost all increases in net material quality on the planet through photosynthesis and solar heating effects. Chloroplasts in plant cells take energy (and minerals and oxygen) from sunlight for plant growth (Sugars, structure, oxygen). Plants, in turn, provide energy for other forms of life, such as animals. Evaporation of water from the oceans by solar heating produces most of the Earth's fresh water. This flow of energy from the sun creates structure and order from the disorder.

.The global ecosystem and its local ecosystems evolved over time into a complex adaptive system with many interdependencies.”

.where LCoM means Law of Conservation of Matter, and LoTD means Laws of Thermodynamics.

Natural Step then created a training certificate program based on their sustainability approach https://thenaturalstep.org/blog/2019/11/21/next-sustainability-for-leaders-training-levels-i-ii-courses-available-in-china-december-2019/ . Our Water Principles can also potentially provide a basis for training courses.

Another example of principles is that of the Soil Health Principles https://menokenfarm.com/5-soil-health-principles/

1) Soil armor; 2) minimizing soil disturbance; 3) plant diversity; 4) continual live plant/ root 5) Livestock integration

Another example is the five laws of meteorology

1) Ideal gas law 2) First Law of Thermodynamics 3) Newtons Second Law of Motion 4) Hydrostatic Law 5) Conservation of Mass Applied to the Atmosphere

I also found this interesting set of principles from The Center for the Force Majeure:

“ First understanding 
Nature’s economic system stores the energy that it does not immediately need 
mostly in carbon formations 

Second understanding
Nature does not charge a profit as do culture’s economic systems 

Third understanding 
All natural systems are dissipative structures with individuals that form them living,
reproducing then dying with indeterminacy as a norm 

Fourth understanding 
All natural systems have learned to nest within each other, and, within a context of 
symbiosis contribute to collective systems survival, sometimes with abundance 

Fifth understanding 
Human constructed artifacts particularly legal, political, economic as well as 
production and consumption systems seek constancy but are often in violation of the 
laws of conservation of energy pointing toward systems entropy”.

We recently met as with a small group of people working in various aspects of the water field to begin crafting the collectively, and to gradually bring in more people into the discussion. The idea is to come up with about 4-10 Water Principles that we reach consensus with a large group of people around….

We are more or less beginning anew with this group to develop the principles. In previous iterations I had gotten to version 4.4 of a possible set of principles

1. Vegetation harvests water from the horizontal flows of water vapor in the atmosphere.

2. Vegetation releases bacteria and spores that help, along with dust particles, seed water vapor condensing into clouds.

3. Increasing vegetation. and decreasing the amount of asphalt and concrete, can bring back rains in areas of low air moisture content, and increase small water cycle flow.

4. Increased amount of small water cycles (where vegetation transpires water to from rain which then waters the vegetation) restore the balance of water between land and sea, slowing the net outflow of water from land to sea

5. Increased medium water cycles keep water overland and hydrating vegetation, and slows net outflow of water from land to sea

6. Dew, formed from water vapor condensing in the night, can hydrate the vegetation.

7. Heat flows from hot to cold. This causes air, and its accompanying water vapor, to also flow. Temperature gradients are the motor which drives atmospheric flow.

8. The sun heats up bare land more, so de-forestration shifts the horizontal heat gradients, which then drive more turbulent airflow on earth, creating more sudden storms and floods.

9. Vegetative transpiration regulates the vertical temperature gradient through evaporative cooling and heat releasing water condensation.

10. Lowering the vertical temperature gradient calms the atmospheric currents. Heat flux through the eye of hurricane drives the hurricane. Lowering the vertical temperature gradient over land, means less power to drive the hurricane, which means the hurricane decays faster over land.

11. Microbes and fungi can increase the amount of water soil absorbs.

12. Dead biomass and earthworks placed in the path of rain, can help soil absorb the water.

13. Increase soil hydration increases plant growth.

14. Increased soil sponginess can lessen floods by directing the water into the ground

15. Increasing soil carbon increases water retention in soil 

16. Biomass is atmospheric carbon sequestered via photosynthesis 

17. Increased soil sponginess leads to aquifers refilling more

18. Aquifers at higher levels lead to rivers running into dry season longer.

19. Increased soil hydration can lessen wildfires.In relation to man-made structures

20. Aqueducts diverting water from one bioregion to funnel to bigger cities can lessen rainfall in those bioregions. If those bioregions are arid, the diversion of water can lead to the cessation of small water cycles, and the dying out of vegetation in that bioregion.

21. Cities can provide more of its own water by becoming sponge cities which create its own small water cycle, where stormwaters flow through soil and wetlands to aquifers below. Wells draw up water to feed its inhabitants. And vegetation transpires water back up to atmosphere.

22. Greening city decreases its heat dome effect. The heat dome alters atmospheric flow of water vapor and air.

23. Dam removal can allow rivers to overflow into floodplains, where more vegetation can grow, which transpired more water vapor into air, and releases more bacteria into air. This water vapor and bacteria may stay put or get blown elsewhere, where it may then condense and form rain.

24. Dam and levee removal, and leaving river-adjacent floodplains wild, can allow waters to naturally adjust their levels, and lessen larger floods in the long term.

25. Hydropower removal can increase river velocity. Higher river velocity allows it to carve wider arcs, which leads to a wider area of hydration of the ecosystem downstream.